Former Wyatt Sicks Member Speaks Out About the Group's Lack of Development

The Wyatt Sicks made an incredibly impactful debut in the summer of 2024 and had a fair amount of success early on. Their momentum, however, slowly faded as time passed, and one former member is now sharing his thoughts on why it was difficult to sustain the interest of the audience.

Joseph Sawyer, formerly known as Joe Gacy, was a guest on Insight with Chris Van Vliet on Thursday, and said he believes that a lack of individual character development hindered the Wyatt's long-term viability.

"I think a lot of the focus was on Taylor (Uncle Howdy), which obviously makes sense. He’s the leader. I do feel like that if they allowed us to develop a little bit more individually, like even our first VHS tapes that were put out early on after the debut. I know (Erick) Rowan had a chance, his VHS vignette was a little longer than ours. But I filmed one where I cut a whole promo, and they just didn’t use it. They just had me humming and rocking back and forth."

Gacy, Lumis, Rowan and Cross rarely received time to develop their characters

The opportunity to garner that one-on-one connection with the audience never really materialized, even when Uncle Howdy had to miss some significant time due to health complications.

“Unfortunately, there was a time when Taylor had to take some time off because of a health issue. They kind of pushed pause on us," Sawyer said. "I think that not allowing us to have that little development where we could have carried things on a little bit on our own, he took the time off, we could have still carried on and done stuff creatively without him, and then could have had a big moment when he came back.”

There was a level of frustration with the group's lack of creative development, Sawyer revealed during the interview. He said numerous pitches were made to the writing team, and although they were well-received, they never came to fruition on air. Sawyer, in particular, really wished he had been granted more promo time.

“I guess in their eyes, the group was Taylor, which I do to an extent understand, but I think we just weren’t given the chance to develop ourselves so we can also become more of a presence in the group.”

The entire Wyatt Sicks group was released from WWE back in April. They made up just a handful of the post-WrestleMania talent cuts this year, but they were among the more surprising departures given their marketability and connection to the late, great Bray Wyatt.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, Sawyer told CVV there were little signs here and there during the lead-up to his release that indicated it was coming. He said it was a shock at the time, and even more shocking that the entire group was collectively released. At the very least, he believed Uncle Howdy would have been retained by the company.

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